WTF Is Facebook Upto with Updated “Terms of Service”?

Monday morning was as usual as always but it got changed when I read this piece from The Consumerist. It’s pertaining to Facebook’s recently updated Terms of Service (TOS). Previously, Facebook claimed that if you close your account, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.

So any content (like it or not) uploaded by you can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. They can even sublicense it if they want. Below is the snippet of what’s in store in their guidelines:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

So the end of the story is, forget about your privacy issues if you think Facebook is good enough for you. So what it is trying to tell is that it’s Facebook or no one i.e. my take is it’s trying to enclose users into its own network. Though official Facebook confirmation about what its real intent has not come out but from outside as a user I didn’t take it in right spirit, whatsoever!

P.S. I’m not ruling out the thumb rule i.e. whatever uploaded in internet is always there but deleting certain things does help the cause but here things fall into a whole different category wherein a 3rd party can use my data forever.